Thursday, 23 February 2012

Magdalena Ball’s third BeWrite Books work chalks up a hat trick for yet another of our outstandingly talented and productive BB authors.

On the heels of her critically acclaimed Sleep Before Evening and ground-breaking Repulsion Thrust science-based poetry collection, we release internationally today – in paperback and all ebook editions – Black Cow.

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Freya and James Archer live the high life in a luxury home in Sydney’s poshest suburb, with money, matching Jags, two beautiful teenage kids … and they couldn’t be more despondent.

James wakes weeping each morning, dreading the pressures of a long and grueling work day ahead, and Freya is struggling with her foundering real estate career.

Global recession is biting in Australia, and the Archers are afraid.

In a desperate bid for happiness and security they shed the fragile trappings of success and cruise over into the slow lane to take an unmapped turn-off on a country road and live off the land in a remote old farmhouse on the peaceful southern island of Tasmania.

But is this an end to their old misery or the beginning of an even greater one?

The rich poetic and literary quality of Ball’s second novel delves into the lives of very real characters as they dig deeply into both the earth and into themselves to discover where their heartaches are really buried. NM

WHAT EARLY REVIEWERS SAY

Fast-paced, gorgeously-written and stunningly perceptive, Black Cow is not only a great read; it is a timely and important one. Joan Schweighardt. Gudrun’s Tapestry and other novels

A novel of our time. We follow the characters through all the compromises, adjustments and hard choices that must be made in hopes of a life of wholeness and integrity. This is a life affirming story. Judy Johnson. The Secret Fate of Mary Watson

A masterpiece. Ball’s seamless exploration of the faulty human-condition and the urgent notion that money means success is brilliantly interwoven with the gentle quietness of unconditional love, invoking the realization that life is precious, and small enough to cradle in the palm of a baby’s hand. Jessica Bell. String Bridge and Twisted Velvet Chains

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Author Magdalena Ball

Like her literary work, Magdalena Ball travels well. Born in the USA, she attended an Oxford University in England and later settled with her husband and children in Australia.

Apart from her full-length books, her short stories and poetry have been widely published and praised. Also she heads the expertly astute reading team at the world-popular COMPULSIVE READER literary review website.

Black Cow is available in paperback from all major online stores or on order from your local brick-and-mortar bookshop now (Feb 24). All ebook editions are available direct from the publisher's bookstore (strictly at Recommended Retail Price only) and any leading (and many second-storey) online ebook retailers and from iTunes to be read on all electronic reading platforms from PCs and laptops, through the full range of dedicated ebook-reading devices, tablets and smart phones.

Free downloadable, read-on screen and print-friendly brochures for Black Cow, Repulsion Thrust and Sleep Before Evening are available at the BeWrite Books bookstore HERE. These free mini-books – exclusive to BB – include book notes, author biography and picture, reviews and a generous extract from Magalena's and all other BeWrite Books titles. And because of their ingenious presentation, they're great fun to boot.

Thursday, 16 February 2012

*The second of his ‘Jupiter’s Reef Trilogy’, The Farthest Reef – sequel to Jupiter’s Reef – is released (Friday Feb 17).

*And Karl becomes the first established BeWrite Books author (with three earlier BB titles under his belt) to use to advantage our new Ebook-First policy with top quality digital editions published before paperback becomes available: A little like the traditional expensive hardback before cheap paperback release system in publishing, only in reverse ... and with much increased author royalties to boot.

In his four decades as a leading light in Science Fiction circles, Karl has always looked far ahead, and with uncanny accuracy of vision ... eyes on the skies, but feet firmly on the ground.

He was the first to tell us: “Gentlemen, the future is today!” His wise words have since become our house slogan.

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THE FARTHEST REEF

Interplanetary explorer Alex Rose broke all the rules, faced all the dangers, and made the greatest discovery in human history ... life teeming beneath the dense clouds of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

And that’s enough for one man’s lifetime. He thought.

He and his forbidden wife, the gorgeous Sensor clone Mary Seventeen, are in peaceful retreat on Ganymede, awaiting the arrival of their first child.

But their contentment is shattered by urgent orders to take up an even greater challenge: the first faster-than-light mission to another solar system.

Escaping an Earth ravaged by war, the starship Goddard, a gigantic self-contained biosystem with a crew of over a thousand, embarks to the red dwarf Lalande 21185 on its maiden voyage. Alex and Mary must go along, with their shuttle, Diver, to explore the orbiting and ancient gas giant planet, also named Lalande.

Since a reef of complex and possibly intelligent life had naturally evolved on Jupiter, what alien life – or even civilizations – might have developed on a much older planet? Would its existence destroy any chance of Goddard, the Noah’s Ark of mankind – from succeeding? Alex and Mary’s assignment is to find out.

The Farthest Reef is the sequel to Jupiter’s Reef and the second in Karl Kofoed’s ‘Jupiter’s Reef Trilogy’. The series will conclude with release in spring or early summer of The Infinite Reef.

Like his celebrated illustrated work, Kofoed’s writing lures the reader with a palpable and thrilling sense of a world as alien to humans as it is full of wonder … and peril. NM

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Author Karl Kofoed

Karl Kofoed’s artwork, by the way, contributed to NASA’s recent Cassini Mission to Saturn, providing what the mission chief deemed the most potentially accurate views of the planet’s moons. His unearthly but amazingly prophetic scenic predictions became the water cooler talk of astronomers around the world.

There’s more about Jupiter’s Reef and the new Farthest Reef in the BeWrite Books bookstore HERE, where there are also exciting free mini-ebook brochures containing book notes, author biography and generous extracts, which can be read on screen, downloaded or printed out.

Both titles are available now in all ebook formats for all electronic reading platforms – from PC and laptops, through all dedicated ebook-reading devices, tablets and smart phones – direct from BEWRITE BOOKS or from all major and many independent online ebook retail stores.

You can read about and see more Karl Kofoed’s work, and that of his futuristic jewelry creator wife, Janet, on their website and experience the breath-taking artwork that inspired NASA on its Saturn mission by looking around the site.

Thursday, 9 February 2012

There’s a special place in our hearts for novels of the American Civil War that don’t conform to the traditional and often depersonalizing fictional and factional reconstructions of that horrific conflict.

Civil wars: Surely the most bitter and emotionally devastating wars of all to those who fire their muskets, jab their bayonets and unsheathe their swords and knives against their own countrymen.

Civil wars are not fought, won or lost by the remote politicians who spark their outbreak, but by ordinary folk, plucked from their private lives, loves and dreams, dressed in uniforms, forced into conformity, armed and thrown into baffling and bloody killing fields, every moment frantic with worry about their far off friends and families back home.

Even those who don’t die and who escape physical maiming can hardly be called ‘survivors’ when a civil war is officially declared to be over and political differences settled around conference tables. And they never know what, if anything, will be left of what they long to return to. Civil war more than any other form can leave dead men walking.

I once asked my late grandfather to describe the horrendous WWI battles he’d struggled through (by no means unscathed physically and psychologically). He told me he couldn’t. Because of the blinding smoke, flares and shell bursts, the deafening roar of artillery and the screams of men and horses, and a soldier’s instinctively intense focus on the very next step he takes, he never knew what was happening more than a few feet away.

Whether a battle had been won or lost, an attack successful or failed was unknown to the fighter until an officer 'officially' announced the outcome and recited the lengthy roll call of the day's dead and missing. I’d have to read the books the generals write, he said. They, you see, could stand back and scan the field. Granddad didn’t have their over-view of mass combat – because he was in the midst of it.

But WWI wasn’t a civil war. The War Between the States was fought by boys and men who shared the same language, the same religion, similar backgrounds and home lives ... and often even the same families.

Today’s BeWrite Books’ release of Kirby McCord’s Cemetery Ridge is about human beings: A book for all eras because it goes so far beyond the warmed-over and obvious. It’s about one confused soldier who saw more than most of what civil war really meant to those caught up in it – whether on the battlefield or in small villages and farms far, far away from the infamously bloody clashes recorded by historians.

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In 1863 America is a Vast Graveyard

Confederate soldier Travis Anderson lives in hell. Friends die excruciating deaths and he is wracked by his own private torture as he, in turn, kills his countrymen in horrific face-to-face combat.

At the height of his misery and terror he is ordered on the most desperate mission imaginable … to save his beloved Texas from invasion by crossing the embattled land to deliver a secret peace proposal to the enemy.

Can the daunting task reconcile his burning doubts and guilt and redeem the honor of a reluctant warrior? Will his passion for a beautiful, married woman free him from his nightmares and exorcise the bloody ghosts that haunt him?

Or will his hopes be buried, along with the Dreams of the South, on Cemetery Ridge?

Anderson’s odyssey reveals to him and to the reader the horrendous scale of the American Civil War. Misery and horror is not limited to the notorious killing fields of Shiloh, Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

Death is everywhere. It inhabits the quaint village of Gainesville, Texas, the tree-dotted hills of Indian Territory, the plains of southern Kansas, the streets of Nashville, Tennessee, the caves of Kentucky, the farms of Indiana, and the highways of Ohio.

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Author Kirby McCord

About author Kirby McCord: When he left the fast track of big city life as a real estate attorney in Dallas and moved with his wife to rural East Texas to raise horses, Kirby’s love of history and of writing was re-kindled. He concentrated on researching the American Civil War and even became involved in battle reenactments to get a closer feel for events than intensive book research alone could provide. His debut novel, Cemetery Ridge is the result.

For more information on this book, its author and for a free extract, please click HERE for our mini-ebook, downloadable, print-friendly full brochure (max five seconds to load). Or you can simply read it on screen right now.

Cemetery Ridge is now available from all major online stores in paperback and all ebook formats for all electronic reading devices. You can also buy ebook editions direct from the publisher’s bookstore on the BeWrite Books website homepage HERE.

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